Meh, you can comment further if you wish. I am choosing to engage here and it's not that costly to me. This has felt like a pretty positive interaction at least at the end.

I appreciate your points. And to your first point I agree that people care about this a lot and feel invested in it. I can empathise with a desire to reduce sexual harassment, I mean, don't most of us want to feel safe and comfortable?

Thanks for your time.

I find it hard to engage with the full sweep of your messages.  The choice for me feels like its between long slightly bitter responses and ungaged surface-level ones. I tried to avoid that by picking specific points last time, but you're right that I didn't really engage. I may not be capable of doing so. But let me see if this works. 

On "people aren't saying EA is uniquely bad, they're invested" if that were the central thing, I'd expect critical comments here to open with "yes, you're probably right about the comparable-communities point, but I think you're missing the deeper thing." Almost none do. (Some straightforwardly disagree, which is a different thing) Most spend their words on what I got wrong, and only when pressed do they acknowledge agreeing with the empirical claim. To me it feels like the piece has struck a nerve. Does mere investment explain why this post provokes that response?

On "I think this whole post would've gone over differently" — I spent about ten hours on it. I could spend another ten and I don't think it would change the response. The methodological criticisms raised so far would lift the numbers by less than 10x on my read, which is still inside the bounds of the estimate. When I've pushed back on those criticisms, people have given way or stopped responding. I don't think they are the crux. 

As for if you could write a post that would be more accepted. Of course you could. I'm not debating that. But I don't think it implies much either. We are different people, with different histories from different EA sub communities and I am mediocre at reading social cues.

You're right that I'm defensive. I am. Part of why is that this comment section feels deeply defensive to me—unwilling to give an inch on the central claim, unwilling to back up criticisms when challenged, willing to imply things about motives. To me, most of these comments feel defensive, including my own.

But I would like us to move to a bette mode of communication. I have at times been defensive and unengaged. Here is a new attempt to engage more fully. 

No, they thought it was controversial, but I took on board many suggestions to soften it.

Separately if it's a useful data point, reading these comments made me not wish to engage with this piece at the object level, at least at the moment.

So in your view I’m being defensive/unpleasant in the comments? Or at least significantly more so?

Okay :)

And what about EA compared to typical workplaces/ university spaces?

In my epistemic norms if someone makes 5 points, I’ll respond to whichever one I choose, if they make one point, i’ll respond to that. Perhaps we have different norms. 

If you have specific criticisms I’m happy to respond to them.

Thank you. 

The discussion in the comments so far focuses on two claims:

1. We can't easily tell from this data whether EA is better or worse than baseline
   1. I agree, though I do think it's some evidence we're not much worse.
2. Why does it even matter whether EA is better or worse than baseline? Community members are welcome to hold EA to a much higher-than-baseline standard, if they want to.

Yes this seems right and hope it's a thing people will take forward.

You're right. My bad. I retract it. 

I have comments, if you're interested.